Empty Home
by Jayden Scott
Summary: As a result of her resurrection, Shepard finds out she is infertile. She deals with it like a trooper, until she is alone with her LI, Miranda. Both women struggle with the emotions of this revelation.


**Well, hell. I've been doing a veritable fuck-ton (actual measurement) of prompt fills lately. Some pervy, some porny, and some just amazing ideas that I've wanted to explore emotionally. This is one of latter.**

**Original prompt is summarized thusly: As a result of her resurrection, FemShep finds out she is infertile. She deals with it like a trooper, until she is alone with her LI (in this case Miranda, for double the angst, since now neither of them can bear children.)**

**This was such an interesting, emotional idea to explore, I had to give it a shot. So I wrote it this morning and it follows below.**

* * *

"Commander?"

Shepard leaned forward on her hands slightly shifting on the examination table. The last mission had not gone completely according to plan, but then they hardly ever did. Missions and operations were always inherently flawed in some way. All parameters would be taken into account: environmental conditions, known enemy strength, maps, floor plans, source intelligence, squad strength, weather, and hell, even possible uniforms the enemy might be wearing. Then those factors were considered and studied, and a strategy was formulated from them and then rejected. Everything was reexamined, and the operation refined and reviewed.

But all it took was one small variable, one metaphorical wrench in the engine, for the strategy to be rendered completely useless. Battle, combat was chaos. Life was chaos. No number of ordered plans or linear equations could predict it, could account for all the myriad of tiny little things that could go wrong.

"Shepard?"

The bullet she had taken had been one of those little things that no one could have predicted. She had taken a lot of fire providing cover for Miranda and Garrus. The Bloodpack mercs outnumbered them by far, another thing that intelligence and mission planning had not accounted for. And the round had plowed through her already weakened shields, punching through the armor. It wasn't bad. The armor had stopped the round eventually, but the kinetic force had punched her armor into her shoulder. It wasn't the worst she had received by any means, but it had landed her in the medbay for an hour while Chakwas ran her tests, applied medigel to the ragged wound.

Life was like that. It didn't mean you didn't do your best, try to avoid the little obstacles and hurdles thrown in your way. She had not meant to die when the original Normandy was attacked. Her intention had been to toss Joker's obstinate ass in an escape pod and follow him the hell off the ship. No one could have predicted the explosion that sent her careening away from safety, bouncing off bulkheads like a rubber ball, ripping her air hose from her suit.

Nor had she intended for Cerberus to resurrect her. It simply happened. That was what life was… a series of happenings that was completely out of your control. The best thing you could do was shift fire, adapt to changing circumstance, do the best you could.

"Rye." The use of her first name finally caused Dr. Chakwas's voice to register with Shepard, made her realize that she had been intently studying a nonexistent spot on the medbay bulkhead, that the doctor's hand was resting on her own. "Did you hear what I said?"

Shepard withdrew her hand as she withdrew from her inner musings, schooled her mouth into a careful smile and nodded. "Yeah, doc. No kids, gotcha. Am I good to go, otherwise?" She slid off the table and reached for her jacket.

The older woman folded her arms across her chest, concern clearly etched on her face. "Commander, I've been your physician for a long time now. I am not sure of the full technical details of your resurrection, but it appears that your reproductive system is the one thing they could not fully restore. The problem seems to be your ovaries."

She shrugged, pulled on her jacket, a little more carefully as she pulled the left arm through the sleeve. Medigel was extremely helpful, but she was still quite tender. "Makes sense. You're born with a finite number of eggs. Mine died when I did. They can't magic them back to life. It makes sense." She repeated without realizing it, smiling reassuringly at the doctor. In truth, she had no clue as to the medical reason behind her infertility; it wasn't important.

"Yes, but even if you were to receive artificial insemination or have another woman's egg implanted, you would miscarry. Your womb simply could not bear a fetus to term." Doctor Chakwas searched her face, as if she might find the answer in Shepard's eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Doc, look," Shepard zipped up the front of her jacket and jammed her hands in her pockets. "Children are the last thing I am thinking about right now. I can't even guarantee we'll make it through the Omega 4 relay and back. Besides, things have a tendency to explode around me. It might not be such a great idea for me to bring kids into this world." She flashed one of her dazzling grins at the doctor, patted her on the shoulder. "I'm fine. I promise." She said and left the medbay, her boots echoing hollowly on the deck.

"Hey, Shep!" Kasumi materialized like a phantom, popping up in the empty space beside Shepard as she keyed in her destination into the elevator's panel. "How's the shoulder? Garrus said you took a good one?"

"Or a bad one, depending on how you look at it." Shepard shrugged and winced as the skin pulled uncomfortably around the not-quite healed wound. "Are you ready for the next mission?"

"A thief helping find a Justicar. Yeah. Peachy idea." Kasumi grumbled with mock annoyance. "So, back to Illium?"

"Could be worse. Could be Omega. There is nothing worth stealing there." Shepard reminded her as the elevator doors hissed open and they stepped into the CIC. "It won't take us long to get there. Pre-mission brief in…" She glimpsed at her omni-tool. "Two hours? Thirteen hundred?"

The thief nodded. "Sounds good, Shep. Should I tell Miranda?" She gave a poor imitation of a salute as her image began to dematerialize and she disappeared under the cloak.

"No," Shepard replied as she stepped up to the map, no longer unnerved by Kasumi's sudden disappearances and reappearances. "I'm changing her out with Jacob. I'll let her know." Squad changes were just one of those unavoidable things that happened, Shepard told herself as she began to punch up the map and mentally make adjustments to the operation as necessary.

* * *

When she finally returned to the ship, Shepard was weary to her bones. Chakwas would not be pleased she put so much stress on her already-injured arm, but her armor helped protect it during the majority of the mission. It had been a damned rabbit chase all over Illium to find the Justicar, assist her in the hopes of gaining her assistance, and finally returning to the ship. She had made sure Samara was settled into the observation deck before shucking her armor in the armory. After tidying up a few close-out reports at her terminal in the CIC, she finally trudged to her quarters.

No missions for a few days, she promised herself. The crew could use a rest, no matter what the ship scanners picked up. She raked her fingers through her messy hair and entered her loft. With a soldier's innate ability, she immediately sensed she wasn't alone. Miranda was waiting for her, sitting on the edge of the bed, legs crossed at the ankles. She glimpsed up as the doors opened and Shepard stepped in.

"Commander," She greeted casually. "The mission went well?"

"Well, I wasn't shot this time, Miss Lawson. So, yes." The usual relief she felt whenever she saw her lover was completely absent. Instead, she only felt more tired. She stripped off her jacket and tossed it onto the sofa. She knew why Miranda was waiting for her, even though she almost always waited for her in the loft whenever she did not accompany her on missions. But she knew in particular why she was there tonight. She should have known Chakwas would inform her of the medical results.

When Miranda did not say anything, Shepard picked her jacket back up and carefully folded it before setting it back down, looking anywhere but the beautiful, dark-haired woman on her bed. "Did you know?" She asked quietly.

"No! Of course not!" Miranda said quickly and shook her head vehemently. "Don't you think I would have told you? Especially…" She could not bring herself to say the words, but both women thought of the reports in the Shadow Broker's files, tests that declared Miranda Lawson incapable of bearing children, that the perfect woman was flawed in a way that no woman should be flawed. "Wilson must have doctored the test results, or the Illusive Man, I don't know."

"You trust Dr. Chakwas's results more than your precious Cerberus results?" Shepard scoffed and stripped her tank top off more violently than necessary. She went to the drawer to replace it with a clean one. "Well, there is a first time for everything." It wasn't that she didn't believe Miranda hadn't known; she knew that she would never lie to her about something like this. She was being unfair to her executive officer and lover but didn't care.

"I trust that Dr. Chakwas has no motivation to deceive you or me." Miranda replied coldly, her icy blue eyes following Shepard as she changed into her usual sleeping garb of tank top and jogging pants. "I also trust that she has nothing but your best interests at heart."

"Unlike Cerberus." Shepard spat, even though she was not even sure if this was Cerberus's fault. Was it anyone's fault at all? Ire flushed her skin, made her feel too hot despite the relative cool her personal quarters were kept at. She needed a target for the anger burning in her chest and behind her eyes, and Cerberus was always a convenient mark.

"Shepard—" Miranda finally stood, and for the first time Shepard noticed that she had shed her usual Cerberus uniform, and was wearing one of Shepard's black undershirts and a pair of her own, too-short sleeping shorts. Before they were lovers, she never saw her executive officer in anything less than her skin-tight cat suit, the blazing emblem of Cerberus over her chest. It clung to her body as if it had been painted on, hugging every curve and accentuating her perfect assets. Seeing her in anything else, made her appear more vulnerable, more human.

Miranda stood behind her as Shepard brushed her teeth, but didn't reach for her. "Shepard?"

Shepard spat into the sink and glimpsed at her lover's face in the mirror. The sharp edges of her anger dulled at the plaintive concern written in her expression. "Miranda, I'm fine. It's not like we were trying or anything." In honesty, children were a consideration always left for the future. One day, when she was older and her job did not demand so much field work, she thought that she would have a few kids of her own. Miranda had come along, and she thought she might like a few with dark hair and blue eyes with haughty countenances.

She had been the one to comfort Miranda when they had found out that it was not possible. They had grieved the loss of their hypothetical children together; Shepard had consoled her with the threat of red-headed kids with her rebelliousness and sarcasm. But now that was not possible either.

"Rye, please." Miranda extended a hand but stopped just short of touching her shoulder.

Rinsing her mouth with cool water, Shepard spat again. "We have the Collectors to worry about right now. And after that, I am certain the Reapers." She wiped her mouth with the towel. "I have a mission to worry about; this kind of pales in comparison to galactic peril."

"Rye, could you stop being so damn stubborn for once?" Miranda attempted exasperation but it faltered into a plea. "It's me. Not your troops. Not the doctor. It's me."

"I'm not being stubborn, I'm being practical." She pushed past her lover and back into the bedroom where she sat on the edge of the bed.

Miranda followed and knelt in front of her, in between her legs. Reaching up, she framed Shepard's face in her delicate hands. "We cannot have children, Shepard."

"I know."

"We will never have children that are _ours_."

Forced to meet those brilliant blue eyes, eyes that held so much love, so much pain, Shepard felt her composure begin to crumble. Miranda could never bear the child she so desperately wanted, and Shepard could not give her one. Tears stung the back of her eyes, and she tried to glimpse away but Miranda wouldn't let her. They could adopt of course, and Shepard certainly was not opposed to the idea, but it was not a replacement. It was not a consolation for the overwhelming loss that clotted in her chest.

She wanted her child, her son, her daughter. She wanted Miranda's child, their child. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she finally broke. The first sob came hard, as if the tears were ice. "When you—I just wanted to be able to give you that. I wanted us to have that." Miranda pressed their foreheads together.

The ache in her chest swelled until it completely constricted her throat, making words impossible. How was it possible for this to hurt so bad? It was not as if she had been pregnant and miscarried. It wasn't as if they had a child that died. She was mourning an ideal, a hope, and it was just as agonizing as grieving the loss of something tangible. She grieved the loss of possibility, the loss of what she wanted, more than she had ever realized, with Miranda. A peaceful home, a family, growing old together and watching their children grow and marry, have children of their own, normalcy. It was something to look forward to, something past the insurmountable odds, past the chaos, past the violence, far into a peaceful, a better future. In a moment, all of those things were taken from her, from them.

"I want our children," Shepard whispered, pulling back ever so slightly to meet her lover's eyes, searching for understanding and finding it.

Miranda's face was also stained with tears, although hers were silent. Shepard never mentioned it, but she caught her lover staring at the children with their parents on Illium, that streaked by them in packs on Omega. It was a deep wound, despite how much she might claim the contrary. She had been genetically bred to be the perfect woman, and was in every respect except one of the most important ones. Her flawlessness only made the fault of infertility all the more glaring in Miranda's eyes.

Cool fingertips rested on her cheekbones as thumbs gently wiped away the still falling tears, and Miranda leaned in and kissed her gently, with more tenderness than anyone would believe the usually austere Cerberus operative was capable of. "I know," Her voice broke and she settled into Shepard's lap, still cradling her face. She kissed her again, and Shepard tasted the salt on her lips. "I want them too."

Shepard wrapped her arms around the smaller woman, holding her close. Miranda rested her forehead on the commander's shoulder, wrapped her arms around her neck. Tomorrow, when she put on her uniform, she knew that this would have to be one of those things in life, one of those things that happened that she could not control, another wisp of the chaos. She would continue her mission as necessary, shifting fire and adjusting in order to survive.

But tonight she allowed herself to feel the devastation, the anguish, to share it with the one person who understood, the one person she trusted with all the broken parts of herself, the only person who had ever come remotely close to putting the pieces back together, literally. She held the woman she loved tightly, clung to her as if drowning, and both women wept for the children they would never know.

* * *

**Every time you read a fic and don't leave a bit of feedback, a baby Reaper gets its wicked-killing-laser-thingie. So please, think of this cycle, and leave a comment. :-)**

**And I'd also like to disclaim, for me being a female with woman-y parts, I know surprisingly little about infertility. So if I got anything wrong, medically or emotionally, I am far and away open to criticism, advice, etc. This was just my own personal (and slightly ignorant) interpretation.**


End file.
